Added Resistance in Oblique Waves on a Container Ship Using CFD

The importance of CFD is increasing in marine hydrodynamics in studying seakeeping and added resistance of ships. While extensive numerical studies have been reported for various ships in head seas in the literature, much fewer CFD studies are found for oblique waves, which in practice is very important in, for instance, estimating required power and maneuverability of ships in realistic sea states.

In this paper, the added resistance and motion responses for the KCS container ship in regular waves are studied and validated systematically for two wave headings and six wavelengths using CFD. The ship is free to heave, pitch, and roll. User-defined implementations in the commercial CFD code are made to effectively constrain the surge and yaw.

Results of the CFD model are compared with up to three sets of experimental data sets, Potential Flow (PF) and existing CFD results from the literature. In general, the present CFD results show  significantly better agreement with the experiments than previously published CFD results. The present study shows that CFD simulations can accurately predict motion responses and added resistance in oblique regular waves.

With these results, designers of ship hulls can get an insight of where to focus the optimization work in the pursuit of fuel-efficient vessels.